Success & Failure Expert

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America loves a “rags to riches” - an “underdog” - an “against all odds come-back.” Bill Bartmann has been a millionaire three times, bankrupt twice and a billionaire once.

Bill Bartmann is the ultimate underdog/survivor/achiever overcoming personal circumstances and tragedy to rise to the top of corporate America. Homeless at age 14, a member of a street gang and a high-school drop-out. He took the GED exam and put himself through college and law school.

At the request of a bank, Bill Bartmann took over a foreclosed oil-field pipe manufacturing plant and turned it into a million dollar a month business, until OPEC slashed the price of oil - leaving Bill out of business and a million dollars in debt.

Refusing to give up, Bill Bartmann and his wife and business partner, Kathy, borrowed $13,000 and created a new industry - Debt Resolution. Three years later they had repaid the entire million dollar debt. Over the next 13 years they grew the new company to 3,900 employees with revenues in excess of $1 billion and earnings in excess of $182 million.

There they pioneered novel financial instruments still utilized today on Wall Street. They also implemented unheard of perks and benefits for their employees, such as salaries at two times the industry standard, free health care, free on-site day care, 250% 401K match program and legendary company trips where they took ALL of the employees and their spouses on annual trips to the Bahamas, Las Vegas and ocean cruises. One year they leased 27, 747’s so they could fly 6,000 employees and spouses to Disney World.

Bill and Kathy have individually graced the covers of national business magazines, Kathy on the cover of Forbes, and Bill on the cover of Inc. They were listed individually in the Forbes 400 wealthiest people in America. One national magazine ranked them number 25.

In 1998, tragedy struck when Bill Bartmann's former business partner committed fraud and sent the company into bankruptcy. Although Bill’s former business partner told the prosecutors he had acted without Bill’s knowledge; admitted his guilt and was sent to prison - in the post Enron environment, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft indicted Bill on 57 felony counts relating to Bill’s partner’s activities. Five years later, after a 2 1/2 month long trial where the government called 53 witnesses and produced over 1,000 exhibits, Bill rested his case without calling a single witness or producing a single exhibit. The jury unanimously acquitted Bill on all counts.

Ironically, 17 months after Bill Bartmann's acquittal and six and a half years after his company was liquidated, the Federal Bankruptcy Trustee issued his report which publicly acknowledged for the first time, “CFS was not a fraud.”

This experience would have embittered most people, but not them. Bill and Kathy now travel the country, sharing their stories of how they created their successes and how they dealt with their challenges. It is their life’s goal to do for “failure” what Betty Ford did for alcoholism, and what Susan Komen did for breast cancer.

Bill Bartmann understands success and failure. He also understands the business world from the ground up - all the way to the top - and back down again - to the top again. He made corporate history by creating companies that transformed him from poverty to millionaire - to bankruptcy - to billionaire - to bankruptcy - to indicted - to acquitted - to the top again.

What others are saying about Bill Bartmann:

“The people I know who are successful, the people who contribute to our society, are people who have failed many times, who have been frustrated many, many times, who have been broke, like Mr. Bartmann, many times. But somehow, they never quit. Soak in from Mr. Bartmann these positive energies, this advice, this counsel, this plan. Take it back with you, implement it.”
- U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE, CLARENCE THOMAS

“Bill Bartmann has built a big business of bad debt. He also may have made bill collectors kinder and gentler. And on the way, he became one of the USA 's richest men. None of it would have happened if he hadn't gone broke.”
- USA TODAY

“Patron Saint of the Second Chance. A second chance. Who better to offer it than Bill Bartmann.”
- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“One of the Phoenix 50. Entrepreneurs who crashed and burned – and bounced back stronger than ever.”
- Success Magazine

“Bill Bartmann is a quintessentially American figure. Perhaps that is because he is fundamentally, a pioneer and a frontiersman, a relentless optimist with unbounded self confidence. When he's down he bounces back with a vengeance.”
- New Yorker Magazine

“Bill Bartmann's success is the stuff of the American Dream."
- Barron's